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If youre a publisher, you already know that news SEO is absolutely crucial.

You might have also learned that optimizing stories for Google News and Google universal search results is fairly difficult to do on the fly.

However, if youre an SEO or PR professional, then you may not even realize just how useful press release SEO can be for your company or clients.

Well, Ive just spent the last two weeks testing a news SEO tool called NewzDash that can help thousands of publishers especially the ones that are covering a rapidly evolving news story like the Coronavirus pandemic.

NewzDash can also help hundreds of SEOs as well as scores of PR agencies and departments if they can learn how to collaborate more closely at a time when most marketing professionals are trying to increase their social distance or work remotely.

So, first Ill show you what NewzDash can do for 25,000 publishers in 15 countries to:

Then, Ill explain how SEO and PR professionals can use a news SEO tool, too.

As I mentioned, publishers understand why optimizing stories for Google and Google News is crucial.

In September 2018, Megan Radogna wrote The ultimate referral guide to your audience, which reported that Google and Google News were sending 51.5% of the external referral traffic publishers in Parse.lys network, while Facebook was sending just 29%.

Also in 2018, a Searchmetrics whitepaper on universal search revealed that Top Stories (the News Carousel formerly known as the News box) were blended into Googles SERPs for 11% of keywords on desktops and 9% of keywords on mobile devices.

And, according to a study of the impact of search features conducted by Perficient Digital and AuthorityLabs Data Services, which was updated on March 3, 2020, News Carousels have a 20% click-through rate.

In other words, organic search traffic has become as essential to online publishers today as single-copy sales by newsies were to Joseph Pulitzer back in 1899.

This is why news SEO is as crucial to journalism in the early 21st century as banner headlines were in the late 19th century.

Now, during the early days of news search SEO, the only tool available to help publishers and SEO professionals to track their rankings in Google News was called Newsknife.

It was a project of Industry Standard Computing Ltd (ISC), a software development organization based in New Zealand.

And, back in December 2010, I wrote in a post in Search Engine Watch entitled, Newsknife Ranks Top News Sites and Journalists of Google News for 2010, which reported that Newsknife had analyzed more than 161,000 listings by 5,859 news sites in the U.S. edition of Google News and created a list of Top News Sites for 2010. They were:

Although Newsknife disappeared from the market a few years later, its worth comparing their list of the Top News Sites in the U.S. a decade ago with one compiled by NewzDash last week.

NewzDash was created by John Shehata, who is now the vice president of audience development and SEO at Cond Nast, home to some of the worlds most iconic brands, including Vogue, The New Yorker, GQ, Vanity Fair, and Wired.

I met him in 2009, when he was Director of SEO & Social Media at Advance Internet, which included 13 local online news sites like NJ.com.

We were both speakers at a session on News Search SEO at Search Engine Strategies (SES) New York.

Later, Shehata became the Executive Director of Search and Social Media at Walt Disney Television, which included ABC News, ABC Entertainment, and Oscars.

Thats around the time that I met other panelists at similar sessions at SES London, SES Chicago, and SES San Francisco. This included:

Thats how I know that their news organizations have been optimizing their stories for Google News for at least a decade.

Today, there are more than 50,000 publishers in 127 countries with local editions of Google News and NewzDash is working to collect data on 25,000 of these publishers in 15 key countries.

However, for my two-week test, the data that I was able to analyze was limited to the top publishers in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, Belgium, France and Germany going back to October 1, 2019.

The complete data set is available for subscribers and not available to trial accounts, which is what I used.

Nevertheless, here are the top news publishers in the U.S. edition of Google News from October 1, 2019, to March 6, 2020:

As you can see, CNN, The New York Times, Washington Post, and USA Today, are still in the top 10 just as they were a decade ago.

But, missing from the old top 10 list are the Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, Reuters, and the Associated Press, ABC News, and BBC News U.K.

Things have shifted significantly since I last looked at a similar list of top news publishers in Google News a decade ago.

What happened to some of the news publishers that were optimizing their stories a decade ago?

Well, NewzDash provides a partial answer in its list of the top video news publishers in the U.S. edition of Google News from October 1, 2019, to March 6, 2020:

As you can see, ABC News is #1, followed by CBS News at #2, Fox News at #3, and CNN at #4.

So, ABC News seems to have mastered video news SEO on YouTube.

In fact, YouTube would be the #1 domain in Google News by far, but NewzDash chooses not to show YouTube as a publisher, opting to show individual YouTube channels for a long list of publishers instead.

And NewzDash provides another part of the answer to my rhetorical question about the BBC News U.K. in its list of the top news publishers in the U.K. version of Google News from October 1, 2019, to March 6, 2020:

And, as you can see, BBC News is #2, behind The Guardian, which has also been optimizing its stories for more than a decade. And the other familiar name on this list is The Telegraph, which ranks #9.

And NewzDash provides the final part of the answer to my rhetorical question in its list of the top video publishers in Google News UK from October 1, 2019, to March 6, 2020:

Check out the list above. The Telegraph ranks #1, Guardian News ranks #3, and BBC News ranks #6.

British national newspapers on the other side of the pond have not only mastered news SEO but have also become proficient at video news optimization for YouTube.

Thats a success story that their American cousins on this side of the pond should examine.

NewsDash also lets you drill down to see the top publishers in Google News sections, including:

For example, heres the list of the top publishers in the Sports section of the U.S. edition of Google News from October 1, 2019, to March 9, 2020:

NewzDash not only reports that ESPN ranks #1 in the Sports section, but that it had a 9.6% share of voice in that category over that period of time.

And heres the list of the top publishers in the Technology section of the U.S. edition of Google News from October 1, 2019, to March 9, 2020:

The Verge not only ranked #1 in the Technology section, it also had a 5.4% share of voice in that category.

In the trial account, NewzDash provides examples of local news reports for Michigan, New Jersey, New York City, and Los Angeles.

More locations are added on-demand per client requests.

For example, heres the list of the top publishers for New Jersey in the U.S. edition of Google News from October 1, 2019, to March 9, 2020:

And heres the list of the top publishers for Michigan in the U.S. edition of Google News from October 1, 2019, to March 6, 2020:

And you can imagine how useful this will be to local news sites in other locations.

Cities and other states can be added in a matter of minutes to customer reports.

There are also NewzDash reports that track news site stats for a single publisher as well as competitive weaknesses and strengths of a group of publishers.

These are all crucial because you cant manage what you cant measure, as Peter Drucker is often quoted as saying.

And the old Newsknife tool didnt enable publishers to track their market share by Google News section, location, or direct competitors.

Now, back before the internet was invented, I was the news editor at an evening newspaper who had to compete for newsstand readers with another evening daily in the same region.

And before that, I was a radio reporter who had to update breaking news stories every hour.

I understand why todays online news editors will want to use the next couple of NewzDash reports every 15 minutes to win todays round-the-clock battle for Google News traffic.

Optimizing breaking news stories is difficult because the rapid flow of new developments quickly makes almost any SEO strategy outdated.

But, NewzDash enables publishers to track keyword rankings every 15, 30, or 60 minutes in Google News SERPs as well as Top Stories the News Carousel, formerly known as the In The News box in Google universal search results.

This enables news publishers to track competitors headlines and see which stories are getting better rankings.

For example, NewzDash did a study on Black Friday and Cyber Monday for 25 days, from Nov. 15 to Dec. 10, 2019. They tracked 25 keywords, including:

And you can see above, Forbes ranked #1 and USA Today ranked #2.

But look at the middle of the image above and you will note that Forbes published 243 unique stories over that 25-day period, and USA Today published 194.

Both publishers flooded the zone on these topics.

However, the top stories on Black Friday and Cyber Monday during this period were:

So, different publishers can have different strategies for covering planned event like these ones or other tent-pole events like the Super Bowl, the Oscars, back to school, Halloween, or Christmas.

What NewzDash enables publishers to do is see which competitors and stories dominated these events.

It also lets publishers understand the tactics that competitors are using like updating the same content every day and switching their URLs, which explains why they won.

So, this is why tracking keywords in near real-time is so crucial.

But, I also wanted to see how NewzDash could be used for a rapidly evolving news story like Coronavirus, which is also known as COVID-19.

It was first reported in Wuhan, China, on December 31, 2019, and the World Health Organization announced last week that the pandemic had swept into at least 114 countries and killed more than 4,000 people.

According to Google Trends, it has prompted a number of questions, including:

As the breakout has spread, there has been a surge in searches in the U.S. for:

So, I used NewzDash to track coronavirus and COVID-19 every 60 minutes from March 3-5.

My test revealed that the top ranking sites are The New York Times, Washington Post, NBC News, USA Today, and CNBC.

In addition, the top stories during that timeframe were:

A quick analysis of this limited sample shows:

Now, if youre an online news editor, then you might use more than a couple of keywords and check rankings more frequently than every 60 minutes for longer than a few days as I did a week ago.

That would enable you to keep up with this rapidly evolving news story in near real-time.

Now, Ive been mucking around in this field since the beta version of Google News was released in September 2002.

And I pioneered what Tad Clarke, the Editorial Director of MarketingSherpa, once called the tactic known as SEO PR to generate measurable results for a wide variety of organizations, including newspaper and magazine publishers.

For example, early press release SEO efforts produced:

But, interest in this tactic dropped like a hot brick in 2013 when Google updated its examples of link schemes to explicitly include:Links with optimized anchor text in articles or press releases distributed on other sites.

Shortly thereafter, conferences like Search Engine Strategies (SES) stopped having sessions on News Search SEO. Training organizations like Market Motive stopped offering courses on Online PR.

And articles like Google News Optimization: How to Boost Your Sites Visibility & Traffic suddenly became as rare as black swans.

But, if you go back and review the list of early results above, then youll see that only one of them involved building backlinks.

The other eight involve boosting brand awareness, driving website traffic, generating leads, increasing sales, or producing a return on marketing investment.

So, maybe its time to take a second look at news SEO, news optimization, or whatever you want to call it these days.

And its worth noting that NewzDash tracks:

So, your biggest challenge wont be finding a press release distribution service thats in Google News or a news SEO tool to track your results.

Based on my experience training SEOs as well as PR agencies and departments since 2002, your biggest challenge will be getting SEO and PR professionals out of their organizational silos and using the best practices from both marketing disciplines.

Now, you may not want to sit around the same table during the coronavirus pandemic. But, you can use a video-conference service to begin tackling this opportunity.

More Resources:

Image Credits

All screenshots taken by author, March 2020

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Why News SEO Is Crucial to Publishers Covering the Coronavirus Pandemic - Search Engine Journal

You do not need to leave your house to watch TV. You do not need to travel long distances to watch TV. You do not need to join a large group of people to watch TV.

This confluence of factors has long made TV the stereotypical standby for the incapacitated, depressed, or introverted. But as the past few weeks have rendered millions of Americans housebound, whether by mandate or caution-informed choice, TV has taken on increased importance as a go-to source of entertainment and distraction. The coronavirus that has spread across the globe and affected more than 156,800 people to date may be an invisible threat, but its impacts on the rhythms of daily life are already clear. Movie theaters, malls, and restaurants have transformed from sites of leisure into potential sites of disease transmission. The living room though, always a metaphorical safe harbor from the stresses of the outside world, has now become a literal one.

The current pandemic is an obvious source of worry as the coronavirus continues to spread. For those of us in lower-risk populations self-isolating out of concern for more vulnerable ones, the anxiety and helplessness are as acute as fear. Among my fellow TV critics, an impromptu practice has rapidly sprung up of offering recommendationssome custom; some generalto the housebound on social media, the virtual equivalent of Lucy indicating the doctor is in. Some publications have inevitably fed widespread demand with more durable resources, creating a more SEO-friendly answer to the question of what, exactly, were supposed to do with ourselves.

Theres a cynical take to be had in translating an ongoing global crisis into clickable content; god knows Ive applied it to myself in the drafting of this piece. But the more optimistic, and ultimately more true, read is that such responses are both a small assertion of controlcertainly a more responsible one than flooding bars with crowds (and denial) on St. Patricks Day weekendand a sincere act of service. Its a small way to make ourselves feel useful; we cant staff hospitals or donate supplies, but we can at least offer some small form of guidance. (While drafting this paragraph, a colleague contacted me on Slack to ask if he should use his quarantine to sink into Gilmore Girls. I was happy to advise.)

As central as TV already was to how we spend unstructured, unscheduled time, further disruptions to daily life have made it more so. Major movie studios have delayed wide releases: MGM pushed the upcoming Bond film No Time to Die; Universal, Fast 9; Disney an entire chunk of its spring slate, including Mulan and New Mutants, all contributing to the lowest weekend box office in more than 20 years. Coachella, instigator of the music-festival boom and its continued standard-bearer, bumped its April dates back by a full six months. Sports leagues like the NBA and the NHL have suspended their schedules, while the MLB has delayed its spring start date and called off spring training.

Amid all this upheaval, TV can feel like a rare pillar of certainty. The status quo is hardly intact, with late-night shows forgoing live studio audiences and Emmy campaigns calling off promotional events, but these departures from the norm feel relatively minor held up against the rest of entertainment, let alone the world. In the past few days, Ive watched coworkers process their shock and plan next steps as the events they cover vanish from the calendar. Meanwhile, my own schedule has remained relatively intact, as have the viewing habits of everyday consumers. Westworld attempted a reset on Sunday, as planned. Later this week, Hulu will premiere yet another prestige miniseries anchored by movie stars, as planned. Larry Davids fictional persona will soon engage in even more elaborate faux pas, as planned.

At a time when face-to-face interaction may be limited to our families, partners, roommates, pets, or even just ourselves, TV can preserve some small shred of the communal experience. I may not have attended my weekly Drag Race outing, but I have exchanged thoughts on Fridays episode (mostly negative) with my circle of friends who watch. Coordinated movie viewings on Zoom and Skype, When Harry Met Sallystyle, have turned into a popular makeshift hangout. Watching a new episode of TV offers the same benefitswith slightly less logistical effortas experiencing the same event as others while being in different places. Its another intrinsic aspect of TV thats taken on an outsized importance: not just a mass medium, but one of the few left standing without a blockbuster or music festival in sight.

TV cant and wont stay unaffected for long. The CW teen drama Riverdale has suspended production in British Columbia, as has Apples celebrity-studded The Morning Show, Netflixs Grace and Frankie, and dozens of other shows, and the list of impacted series is growing by the day. Its unclear how these stoppages will affect future release calendars, only that they eventually will. The gap between production and release that can make TV such a balmit is, quite literally, a dispatch from a different timeguarantees an inevitable delay. But crises can make it difficult to think past the current moment, and at the current moment, TV feels reliable when little else does.

Its normal to start thinking of TV characters as your friends, a tendency encouraged by TV shows increasingly taking the place of in-person friendships. The past few weeks have revealed TVs ability to serve as a social, psychological, and logistical crutch, one increasingly leaned on as preventative measures escalate. Cable news is where we go to learn about the world; the rest of TV is where we go to immerse ourselves in another world, one less or more exotically chaotic, but a much-needed escape. Your local bar may not be open, but Cheers always is.

More:
TV, the Last Shred of Normalcy in an Abnormal World - The Ringer

PASO ROBLES, Calif., March 14, 2020 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- A good accountant is as important to business as quality products and services, loyal customers and reliable vendors. "The relationship between you and your accountant is a partnership," says Robert Borish, CPA with the Atascadero payroll firm, North County Tax and Accounting, "that relies on the information you provide and the accountant's experience and knowledge."

Of course, a strong working relationship with a good accountant is an absolute necessity for tax preparation. The same can be said for other aspects of operating business including payroll, bookkeeping, invoicing, accounts payable and receivables, and all financial matters.

The key is understanding how to get the most out of your accountant and getting the best service from a valuable resource.

North County Tax and Accounting draws on more than 25 years of experience. The accountants and staff care about building lasting client relationships and freeing up business owners and managers from the complicated details of accounting, payroll, taxes and tax planning so they can focus on growing their businesses.

North County Tax and Accounting 5905 Capistrano Ave. Atascadero, CA 93422 (805) 466-7121

This press release is by Paso Robles SEO and advertising company, Access Publishing, 806 9th Street, #2D, Paso Robles, CA 93446. (805) 226-9890.

SOURCE North County Tax and Accounting

The rest is here:
Atascadero Payroll Firm Releases 'The Top Ways To Get The Most From Your Accountant' - Benzinga

Its a little difficult to strike handshake deals when, you know, youre not supposed to shake hands.

An increasingly denuded 2020 events calendar the live event components of the upfronts are the latest cancelations could soon start to have a chilling effect on their ability to attract new clients.

Lead gen and pipeline will be impacted, said Tiffany Coletti Kaiser, EVP of marketing at digital media solutions company Digital Remedy. The question is not if, but when.

Screwed together

Of course, everyones pretty much in the same boat, which helps leaven the impact for now.

If were screwed, were all screwed in the same way, said Maor Sadra, CEO of Berlin-based user acquisition platform Applift.

In Sadras view, the ad tech industry at large can probably tolerate at least a couple months of the new normal without any ill effects.

Remote work is relatively common in the tech world, and, if anything, the coronavirus crisis is generating higher eCPMs for publishers. Theres also no reason to imagine well see a slowdown in ad spend from companies that sell virtual goods, such as games and utility apps.

There will come a point, though, when the sales funnel starts to evaporate. Events usually generate roughly one-third of Applifts sales leads, and the company hasnt been able to attend any since January.

Several Applift employees were supposed to meet with representatives from Publicis a few days ago, but an hour before the plane was scheduled to take off, the holding company put out a memo cancelling all external in-person meetings.

In a way, this is almost like a test of brand positioning in the market, Sadra said. Hopefully our SEO and our positioning is good enough for people to remember us if theyre looking for a partner.

But Applift, unlike some others, is lucky in that its somewhat insulated in case of a dry spell. The company, which is profitable today, was acquired by German conglomerate Media and Games Invest in June 2019, and that provides a helpful cushion.

If I was burning cash right now and was in a position where I needed to make certain moves, it would be a very different story, Sadra said.

In terms of sales targets, Applift, which sets its targets quarterly, is playing it by ear. March will remain unchanged, but Applift will most likely recalibrate in April, Sadra said, and hope for the best.

B2B account-based marketing vendor Demandbase is doing much the same. Although the sales team is currently on track to hit quarterly goals despite the pandemic, we are being realistic that things may shift and are fully prepared to address any changes, said CEO Gabe Rogol.

No more steak dinners?

Companies in certain industries teleconferencing, home entertainment and pharmaceutical, for example can take the long view and implement thoughtful, data-centric strategies. Theyre well positioned to weather most of the business-related vicissitudes coronavirus brings.

Applift has one client, a bus company, that is pausing its ad spendbecause its also temporarily pausing all of its routes due to coronavirus. Meanwhile, another company that provides in-person training services is panicking for obvious reasons, said Chris Franks, CEO at CleverFunnel, a Denver-based agency that works with the company.

CleverFunnel has several projects in the works with this training company, all of which have been tabled until further notice.

But for companies with the option to do their business online, the coronavirus is a forcing function for the new digital world in which theyll be able to see how much bang they really get from all the money they spend traveling around the world to wine and dine existing customers and new prospects, said Jeff Lunsford, CEO of Tealium.

Companies that are reliant on travel, on steak dinner-type interactions, are going to struggle, and companies that know how to operate efficiently digitally will do well, Lunsford said. I believe face-to-face engagement is extremely valuable, but I also believe its possible to run your business and engage with customers remotely. Ive been an entrepreneur for 24 years, and Ive done it both ways.

Getting creative

Videoconferencing is the obvious replacement for the lack of in-person engagement. But there are also other ways to create connections while in quarantine.

Since networking during happy hour at trade shows isnt possible, Criteo, for example, is encouraging its commercial team to use LinkedIn and Twitter to reach out to other registered attendees of canceled events to request virtual one-on-ones.

Outside of just replacing conference networking, social media is a great tool for salespeople to utilize to continue building leads and connecting with contacts, said Criteo CEO Megan Clarken. By connecting with potential clients online and engaging with what theyre posting and sharing, salespeople are able to build virtual relationships while in-person meetings are on pause.

But some companies are putting a whole new spin on virtual conferencing.

Cockroach Labs is a computer software provider that develops commercial database management systems and usually relies heavily on events to capture leads and generate broad awareness. Without events to attend, it created a virtual badge scan that uses a landing page to capture contact info and then makes a small donation to Women Who Code for every email address it gets. One-on-one meetings with company reps are incentivized with the promise of a larger $50 donation.

The silver lining is the impact this will have for new creative ways to build out a [go-to-market] strategy, Jim Walker, VP of product marketing at Cockroach Labs.

But, perhaps, theres also another benefit: Cutting down on unnecessary meetings that should never have been meetings in the first place.

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Tech Companies Get Creative As Coronavirus Threatens To Parch Their Pipelines - AdExchanger

If you find it difficult to keep up with new technologies at work, then be reassured that you are not the only one feeling somewhat overwhelmed. One in three UK employees fear they are lacking skills when compared with their colleagues and believe that because of this they would be overlooked for promotion, according to a survey by OnePoll for PeopleCert in 2019.

The same study found that 67 per cent think retraining could reignite their career, and would consider learning new skills for their current role, such as coding, data analytics, cloud computing and digital marketing.

Bosses also say they are concerned. Research conducted by Burning Glass Technologies for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, found that 52 per cent of business leaders think technology evolves too quickly for their organisations to keep up with the changing skills required, and 10 per cent dont know where to start when it comes to developing a digital training strategy.

A 2019 Open University study, meanwhile, titled Bridging the Digital Divide, found that although there is still a need to increase basic or foundation-level digital skills including how to use spreadsheets and word processing programmes, most employers report that gaining higher and degree-level digital skills coding, cloud computing and data analytics are more of a priority.

Why you should learn to code

The same study found that the lack of appropriate digital skills at intermediate and senior management levels has the most significant impact on their businesses.

It also showed that age appears to have an impact on how keen we are to have access to more digital training. Two thirds (67%) of 18-35 year olds said they would be receptive to more digital training from their employers, with 22% of younger employees even funding their own training in this area.

By contrast, just one in four people over 55 said that they would like digital skills training.

Julie OSullivan has been working in advertising and copywriting for more than 20 years. She returned to freelancing after taking time out for kids but found the skills required had changed and she needed to invest in training. Within just a few years, social media, SEO have changed the way we do things, she says.

Back in the day all you had to do was write. This is not the case any more. I was confident I had the experience and the copywriting skills, but I wanted to enhance my digital skills to ensure I stay on top of things, so I decided to take an online course on digital media.

In order to keep up with a world that is constantly changing, ongoing learning and training is key, says David Willett, commercial director in the Open Universitys Business Development Unit.

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One in three UK employees fear they lack tech skills: Why training is key - Evening Standard